STRANGER IN THE LANGUAGE

A poem in Arabic by Orian Zakai

This poem was written by our student Orian Zakai in the Advaced Plus course Political and Historical Palestinian Poetry with the teacher Yazan. During the course, students studied and analyzed many poems by several Palestinian poets and at the end, they were asked to write a poem of their own in any style that they chose, as inspired by any of the poems studied.

Orian chose to write about her experience with language learning. She compared language learning (and more specifically, creative writing) to wandering around a city in which one is a stranger, trying to navigate through the local streets, the hidden corners, and the narrow alleys of the language, trying to find the correct term, the right metaphor, and the fitting rhyme.

---

غريبة في اللغة

كيف تكتبي شِعر في اللغة العربية؟

مثل ما تتجولي في مدينة ما بتعرفيها،

تمشي بس في الشوارع الرئيسية

عشان ما بتعرفي طرق جانبية

كيف رح تلاقي كلمات قوية؟

إذا في الزّقاق مخبّية القافيها

والمجاز مخفي في الزاوية

اللغة واسعة وأنتي مش محلية

المدينة قديمة وأنتي غريبة فيها

بتحملي معك الفضول والشجاعة

خطوة بخطوة تتعلميها

رح تلاقي المسارات الحقيقية

ورح تكون قصيدتك مثل خريطة سرية.